China con­fi­dent about trade talks with US

The Min­istry of Com­merce said on Wed­nes­day that the lat­est meet­ing be­tween the pres­i­dents of China and the United States on eco­nomic and trade is­sues was suc­cess­ful, and the coun­try has con­fi­dence in im­ple­ment­ing the lead­ers’ con­sen­sus.

The eco­nomic and trade teams of both sides will fol­low a clear sched­ule and road map in the 90-day win­dow that was agreed upon for talks, a min­istry spokesper­son said.

China will start by im­ple­ment­ing spe­cific parts of the newly reached con­sen­sus as soon as pos­si­ble, ac­cord­ing to the spokesper­son.

Wei Jian­guo, a for­mer vice-min­is­ter of com­merce, said both China and the US rec­og­nize that it was com­pletely nor­mal to have cer­tain dis­par­i­ties in eco­nomic and trade is­sues, but the key is to ap­pro­pri­ately man­age the dif­fer­ences and find so­lu­tions ac­cept­able to both par­ties.

The two na­tions should con­tinue to main­tain close con­tact and make more joint ef­forts to deepen bi­lat­eral ties, said Wei, who is now vice-pres­i­dent of the China Cen­ter for In­ter­na­tional Eco­nomic Ex­changes.

China should stick to its es­tab­lished agenda of fur­ther openingup in a timely man­ner, and make en­hanced ef­forts to pro­tect in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty rights, he said.

“We should make the eco­nomic and trade pie big­ger, and help the US see that China’s de­vel­op­ment will bring more ben­e­fits to the US.”

Busi­ness lead­ers from both China and the US be­lieve that healthy and sta­ble China-US eco­nomic and trade ties are in the fun­da­men­tal in­ter­ests of the two coun­tries and the world.

Push­ing bi­lat­eral re­la­tions back to a nor­mal track as soon as pos­si­ble will also meet peo­ple’s ex­pec­ta­tions in both na­tions, they said.

Co­op­er­a­tion has al­ways been the only cor­rect choice be­tween China and the US, they said dur­ing the 11th di­a­logue be­tween busi­ness lead­ers and for­mer se­nior of­fi­cials from China and the US.

The di­a­logue, led by for­mer vice-pre­mier Zeng Peiyan and Thomas Dono­hue, pres­i­dent of the US Cham­ber of Com­merce, con­cluded on Tues­day in Wash­ing­ton.

US rep­re­sen­ta­tives who at­tended the meet­ing said both na­tions should elim­i­nate po­ten­tial ten­sion-caus­ing fac­tors and avoid trade con­flicts.

The US busi­ness com­mu­nity sup­ports the idea of strength­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion with China, at­tach­ing im­por­tance to the hard-won achieve­ments of four decades of diplo­macy be­tween the two coun­tries and look­ing for­ward to sub­stan­tive re­sults in the next ne­go­ti­a­tions and con­sul­ta­tions.

US busi­ness lead­ers also said the two coun­tries should look for ar­eas of co­op­er­a­tion with com­mon in­ter­ests and fur­ther pro­mote mar­ket open­ing.

Sta­ble bi­lat­eral busi­ness ties help US com­pa­nies gen­er­ate sales rev­enue in China be­cause the na­tions’ trade struc­tures are fairly com­ple­men­tary, said Sang Baichuan, a pro­fes­sor at the Univer­sity of In­ter­na­tional Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics in Bei­jing.